Bank Leumi Chooses Galaxy to Put Crypto Trading Inside Its Banking App
Israel’s largest bank plans to let Leumi and PEPPER customers trade Bitcoin, Ether and Solana through its own investment app from early 2027.
Bank Leumi is preparing to bring cryptocurrency trading into the same regulated digital environment its customers already use for conventional investments. The Israeli bank has selected Galaxy Digital to provide execution and custody infrastructure for a service expected to launch in early 2027.
Customers of Bank Leumi and PEPPER, its mobile banking brand, are due to gain access to Bitcoin, Ether and Solana through a dedicated section of the Leumi Trade capital-markets application. The bank says users will be able to buy, hold and sell the selected assets without leaving its existing interface. If delivered as announced, Leumi would become the first bank in Israel to offer digital-asset trading directly to its retail customers.
The partnership divides the technology stack into two institutional components. GalaxyOne Institutional will support trading and related execution services. Galaxy’s custody-infrastructure business, formerly known as GK8, will support the bank’s digital-asset custody architecture. Bank Leumi will retain the customer-facing relationship and embed the service inside its own application, while Galaxy provides specialized market and security infrastructure behind the scenes.
That structure reflects the direction of travel in bank-led crypto adoption. Instead of asking customers to transfer funds to a separate exchange, the bank can place digital assets alongside familiar securities and cash accounts. The customer relationship, onboarding and account access remain within the banking environment, while an infrastructure provider supplies liquidity, trade execution and custody technology that would be expensive to build from scratch.
The selected asset list is deliberately narrow. Bitcoin and Ether account for the largest and most established segments of the crypto market, while Solana has become a significant network for trading, payments and token issuance. Limiting the launch to three liquid assets reduces some operational complexity, but it does not remove market volatility, custody risk, cyber risk or the need for robust suitability and disclosure processes.
The announcement also illustrates Galaxy’s effort to become an infrastructure partner to banks rather than only a crypto trading counterparty. GalaxyOne Institutional is pitched to banks, asset managers and other professional clients. Combining execution with the custody technology inherited from GK8 gives Galaxy a broader role across the transaction lifecycle, from order handling to safeguarding cryptographic keys and reconciling customer positions.
For Bank Leumi, the commercial case is partly defensive. Customers who want digital-asset exposure already have access through local and international platforms. Integrating trading into Leumi Trade may help the bank retain deposits, investment activity and engagement that would otherwise move to external providers. It also lets the bank apply its own compliance controls and risk limits at the point where fiat money enters or leaves the digital-asset market.
The regulatory context is central. Israel’s banking supervisor has previously emphasized risk-based anti-money-laundering controls for activity linked to virtual currencies and warned banks against blanket refusals when dealing with licensed service providers. A bank-operated service can make source-of-funds checks and transaction monitoring more systematic, but it also concentrates responsibility. Leumi will need clear policies for asset eligibility, wallet movements, sanctions screening, pricing, custody incidents and customer recourse.
Important commercial details remain undisclosed. The companies did not publish fees, spreads, minimum trade sizes, custody arrangements at the customer level or the conditions that must be met before launch. The early-2027 timetable is forward-looking and could be affected by technology integration, regulatory review or market conditions. The announcement should therefore be read as a committed implementation plan, not as an already available product.
Why it matters
A large incumbent bank is choosing to integrate crypto into its core investment experience rather than treat it as an external, specialist service. That can broaden access and raise expectations for consumer protection, reporting and operational resilience. For Galaxy, the deal is evidence that institutional crypto infrastructure can be sold as modular banking technology. For other banks, Leumi’s launch will test whether regulated distribution meaningfully changes customer trust and trading behavior compared with standalone exchanges.